Tag Archives: persecution

After Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses, religious “scholars” doubted whether the Ayatollah Khomeini had the right to order his murder. They had no liberal qualms about executing a writer for subjecting religion to imaginative scrutiny. They believed that blasphemers and apostates must die as their religion insisted. But only if they were citizens of an Islamic state. As Rushdie was living in London in 1989, a free man in a free country, the clerics concluded that religious law did not apply to him.

The Rushdie controversy was the Dreyfus affair of the late 20th century. It established today’s dividing lines between the secular and the authoritarian, between those who were willing to defend freedom of thought and inquiry and those who wanted to censor and self-censor to keep fanatics happy. We can gauge how low we have sunk by remembering that at the start of the battle 23 years ago there was a tiny regard for the forms of legality, even among those who were otherwise happy to condemn free thinkers to death. However brutal they were, they respected their version of due process.

The Islamist murders first of Salmaan Taseer and then of Shahbaz Bhatti show that what tiny scruples blood-soaked men possessed vanished long ago. The best way to describe the terror which is reducing Pakistani liberals to silence is to enumerate what the assassins did not allege. They did not say that Taseer and Bhatti must die because they were apostates – or, to put that “crime” in plain language, because they were adults who decided they no longer believed in the Muslim god. Taseer had not renounced Islam. Bhatti could not renounce it as he was the bravest Christian in Pakistan, who campaigned for equal rights for persecuted minorities with the dignity and physical courage of a modern Martin Luther King.

Nor did their assassins claim that their targets had committed the capital crime of blasphemy. Taseer and Bhatti had not said that the Koran, like the Talmud and the New Testament, was the work of men not god. They did not denounce Muhammad’s morality or offer any criticism of his life and teaching. If you wanted to reduce the whirling, brilliant narrative of Rushdie’s Satanic Verses to a single sentence, you could say that it was in part a “blasphemous” account of the early history of Islam. Taseer and Bhatti attempted nothing so brave. They confined themselves to making the modest point that Pakistan’s death penalty for blasphemy was excessive and barbaric, and that was enough to condemn them. Their killers murdered them for the previously unknown crime of advocating law reform: blew them away for the new offence of blaspheming against blasphemy.

One Pakistani journalist I spoke to described his fellow liberals as members of a persecuted minority, who now knew that if they spoke out, they would be shot down. Salmaan Taseer’s daughter, Shehrbano, wrote a heartbreaking piece for the Guardian in which she despaired of a “spineless” Pakistani elite that was too frightened to praise her father or condemn his murderers.

In the networked world, censorship by the authoritarian state or clerical paramilitaries is meant to matter less. Technology enthusiasts can point to Twitter revolutions as proof of how emancipatory democratic ideas seep into apparently closed societies. But the ideas that Pakistanis need from America, Europe or “the west” to help fight armed theocracy are not there for surfers to find.

Fear plays its part in keeping western opinion quiet as well. It is hard to credit, but liberal society responded pretty well to the threat to Rushdie in 1989. Penguin refused to withdraw the Satanic Verses. Booksellers ignored threats and bombs and carried on selling it. But once the global wave of terror had passed, no one wanted to put themselves through what Rushdie and Penguin had been through, and a silence descended. Even the supposedly militant “new atheists,” whom genteel commentators damn for their vulgarity, steer clear of religions that might kill them. Close readers of Richard Dawkins will notice that almost all his examples of clerical folly are drawn from the Catholic and American evangelical churches, whose congregations are unlikely to firebomb his publishers.

The fear is still present. Last month, four men were convicted of slashing the face and fracturing the skull of Gary Smith, a London teacher who had made the mistake of taking the windy official pronouncements about “promoting diversity” seriously and taught Muslim girls about Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism. Political violence comes from the British National Party, English Defence League and various splinter groups from the IRA, as well as Islamists, and that is before you raise your gaze and examine the assorted gun-totting crazies who inhabit the fringe of American politics.

The difference between Islamism and the rest is that liberals are happy to denounce white extremists, while covering up militant Islam with the wet blanket of political correctness. They do not confine themselves to saying that, of course, society must protect people from being murdered for their religion, as Slobodan Milosevic murdered the Bosnian Muslims, and punish employers who refuse jobs to members of creeds they dislike, as Protestant employers in Northern Ireland once refused to hire Catholics. They maintain it is illicit to criticise religious ideas. Thus, along with the admittedly faint fear of violence, western writers who want to provide arguments against religious misogyny, homophobia, racism and censorship must also live with the fear that their contemporaries will accuse them of orientalism or Islamophobia.

The world may pay a price for the monumental blunder of treating religious ideologies – which are beliefs that men and women ought to be free to accept or reject – as if they were ethnicities, which no man or woman can change. Not the smallest reason why the Arab revolution is such an optimistic event is that al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood have been left as gawping bystanders. Their isolation cannot last. Eventually, if Arab states move towards democracy, there will be a confrontation with political Islam. Arab liberals, like Pakistani liberals, will search the net for guidance. They will discover that far from offering strategies that might help, timorous western liberals have convinced themselves that it is “racist” to criticise raging fanatics who no longer even bother to pretend that they are anything other than liberalism’s mortal enemies.

SO it has come to this. Reading about Sherry Rehman’s decision to drop her attempt to amend Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws, I had three quick thoughts.

First, hats off to a very brave woman. Second, shame on a government and country which cannot protect its minorities from human rights abuses, violence and extremism. Third, forget criticism from Pakistan and other Muslim countries of so-called ‘Islamophobia’ in Europe and America: people in glass houses should not throw stones at others.

Being part of a minority is not easy in any part of the world. History is replete with horrifying examples of persecution of minorities, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust to the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Rwanda. But I never expected the country I was born in to turn into this sad land of intolerance and ignorance.

Growing up in Pakistan all those years ago, I was taught that the constitution protected Muslims and that the white strip on the Pakistan flag represented Pakistan’s minorities. We lived in a vibrant, diverse multi-cultural community. Like many women my age, I was taught by Christian teachers, brought up by Hindu ayahs and learned ballet from exquisite Parsi ballet dancers. But times have changed, tolerance and accommodation, the concept of ‘live and let live’ have given way to persecution and discrimination.

Pakistan is not alone in treating its minorities as second-class citizens. Across the Muslim world today, being a Christian means at best being subject to hostility and discrimination and in the worst case, facing the death sentence. What I find particularly galling is that the countries — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan for example — which mete out the harshest treatment to their Christian communities are the most vocal when it comes to denouncing ‘Islamophobia’ in Europe and the US. Frankly, I am getting fed up with such accusations.

Having kept a very close eye on Europe’s 20 million-strong Muslim communities over the last 10 years, I can safely say: yes, it has been a challenging decade for European Muslims but most would agree that it is better to be a Muslim in Europe than a Christian (or a Hindu) in a Muslim country.

There is no doubt that the 9/11 terrorist attacks, followed by the publication of caricatures of the Prophet (PBUH) by several European newspapers, the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, as well as subsequent real and suspected terrorist activity in Europe, have resulted in increased suspicion, surveillance and stigmatisation of Europe’s Muslim communities.

Most European governments have enacted tough new anti-terrorist legislation. Populist parties, using a simple anti-foreigner/anti-Islam rhetoric, have gained more influence and power in many EU countries. Mainstream politicians have adopted an equally strident anti-Islam and anti-Muslim narrative to win votes and improve their ratings in opinion polls.

The discussion on integration has been further muddied by rising European concerns about the arrival of refugees and asylum-seekers. In the process, journalistic ethics have suffered, with few journalists ready to challenge prejudice, clichés and misleading reports. Undoubtedly, Europe’s commitment to core values, including human rights, freedom of expression and freedom of religion, has taken a blow.

In addition, Europe’s post 9/11 attitudes towards Islam are linked to security concerns and fears of radicalisation of the continent’s Muslims but also reflect uncertainty about European identity. Making matters worse, an uncertain economic climate in many European countries as well as the presence of weak leaders unable to ease public anxieties about globalisation and unemployment have made it easier for populist politicians to spread a simple albeit toxic xenophobic message: the West is headed for a clash with Islam and Muslims.

However, this is only part of the story. Despite the anxiety about the visible presence of Islam and Muslims in the public space, the last 10 years have also been marked by transition and change in the lives of European Muslims.

The spotlight on European Muslims has had a positive effect by helping Muslims and host communities confront difficult issues of integration and multiple identities which had been neglected and overlooked over decades.

Governments are slowly combining a security-focused prism with a more balanced approach which includes an integration agenda and Muslim outreach programmes. Government and business recruitment policies are being changed gradually to increase the employment of Muslims and minorities. Business leaders are demanding an increase in immigration, including from Muslim countries, to meet Europe’s skills shortage. The EU has adopted a new anti-discrimination directive in the new Lisbon Treaty which strengthens existing rules on combating racism.

Significantly, European Muslims are becoming more active in demanding equal rights as full-fledged citizens, organising themselves into pressure groups, and emerging as influential politicians, entrepreneurs and cultural and sports icons. Ten years after 9/11, the challenge for European governments and European Muslims is to hammer out a fresh narrative which looks at European Muslims as active and full-fledged citizens rather than as exotic foreigners.

Despite German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s comments on the failure of multiculturalism in Europe, the continent today is a vibrant mix of people, cultures and religions. Integration and mainstreaming is taking place and there is slow but steady recognition that all Europeans, whatever their religion, ethnic origins and cultural background, share a common space.

More time and hard work will be needed before Europeans elect their own Barack Obama and readily embrace and celebrate diversity. But work on such a goal has begun.

My advice to Muslim governments is simple: stop ranting against the West, take a few lessons in citizenship and minority rights from Europe and America and start listening to all your citizens, not just the small number of extremists which carry guns.

It looks as Pakistan has reached to that point where the country is shrinking its space for non-Muslims or those with a different notion of religion. We as a nation have allowed ourselves to set double standards and enjoy the invisible pride and dominnance which we feel being Muslims. On one hand we insist on having a Mosque near ground zero and on other hand we beat Christians for preaching their beliefs. Is this a fair game?

In this country, we have made lives of non-Muslims not less than a hell and every step we take leads to their further intimidation and persecution. This country is for everyone and people cannot be victimized for saying what they believe in. Looking at the fact that Christianity should be the most acceptable religion for Muslims, the whole persecution seems baseless. Muslims cherish the thought of seeing their Mosques in every nook and corner and Muslims ruling the world, but they loathe the idea of co existing with people of other religions in their own countries.

It is the generosity and extreme of tolerance of Christian/other countries that they let Islam and Muslims to exist in their countries openly and the same attitude is expected from Muslims for non-Muslims in their countries too. But it is happening otherwise. I request Pakistanis to exercise tolerance and make this country available for people from all religions. The strength of Islam lies in its existence with other religions and giving people a choice to embrace it. But through such torturous behaviour, we have made Islam fragile and conveyed to the world that Islam is threatened by other religions. The time has come that we start watching what signals we send to the world as a nation.

Below is the story:

PUNJAB: Five young men severely assaulted a pastor in Punjab, Pakistan for preaching, a Christian human rights group said. According to International Christian Concern (ICC), Emmanuel Beshir, pastor of Holy City Pentecostal Church, was returning from preaching in Bahmani Wala village at 9 PM when five young men stopped him.

They asked, “Why do you preach that Jesus Christ is Lord and nobody can get salvation without Jesus Christ?” The pastor replied, “We will never stop preaching about the Lord Jesus Christ, and we will tell about him to all the nations.”

Then the men assaulted him with wooden rods, breaking his right hand and multiple ribs. Pastor Beshir is receiving medical treatment at Farooq Hospital in Lahore city, according to ICC.
Christians have been targeted before in Bahamani Wala village. On June 30, 2009, more than 600 Muslims attacked Christians in the village after falsely accusing them of blasphemy. The attackers destroyed the Christian homes and looted their property.

“We are deeply concerned by the attack against Pastor Beshir. The right to freedom of religion, including the right to share one’s faith, is an internationally recognized principle of human rights,” said Jonathan Racho, ICC’s Regional Manager for South Asia. “Unfortunately Christian minorities face attacks and even death when sharing their faith in Islamic countries. We urge Pakistan to protect Christian minorities from such attacks.”

Is religion bigger then human life? When the Creator could not do injustice while distributing His blessings upon people; who are we to decide the fate of others? If only “your religion or belief” is superior then how come everyone else is alive, being fed, and being blessed by God regardless of his/her creed, sect and religion. Allah, Khuda, Bhagwan, and God are all names of one superior power who is the most generous and divine. He is the One Who gives life and feeds Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and even atheists and gives everyone a right to choose his path with all the responsibility of results. When I am allowed to choose my path by my God, then I do not expect the whole society to interfere. When He wants me to be alive then no one else has a right to take my life because I have a different notion of religion. Taking a human life is a sin and those who commit it must understand that no reward is offered for criminals not even in Islam. They must cease committing all crime against humanity in the name of Islam or any other religion.

Below is the article published in Los Angeles Times on Ahmadis:

Pakistan sect endures persecution

Reporting from Faisalabad, Pakistan —
Rifles slung over their shoulders, the guards pacing in front of Naeem Masood’s fabric shop glower at anyone who walks by. It’s not thieves or vandals that Masood is worried about. He needs protection from assassins.

In April, the 29-year-old boyish-faced Pakistani found his father, brother and uncle slumped over in the seats of their car, their faces and chests riddled with more than 60 bullets. All of them were dead, victims of what Ahmadis in their Faisalabad enclave say was a deadly warning from extremists: Renounce your sect or leave the city.

No Pakistani minority is as victimized as the country’s 4 million Ahmadis, who believe in Islam but are viewed by the rest of the country as heretics. Because they revere another prophet as well asthe prophet Muhammad, the Pakistani government has declared Ahmadis “non-Muslims,” made it a crime for members to refer to their places of worship as mosques and even barred them from extending the common Muslim greeting, salaamaleykum.
The Ahmadi community’s vulnerability was evident May 28, when Pakistani Taliban gunmen stormed two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city, and killed more than 90 people caught in a maelstrom of gunfire, grenades and suicide bombings.

Though Pakistan is a multiethnic and multilingual society, it has a long history of marginalizing minority groups. Shiite Muslims have been the target of radical Sunni Muslim groups for years. Last year, in the central Punjab city of Gojra, a mob of 1,000 angry Muslims set more than 40 Christian homes ablaze, killing seven people.

The plight of the Ahmadi community, however, provides a window onto the intolerance that permeates Pakistani society. Ahmadis say the risk they face is heightened by the fact that, in a society where hard-line religious parties wield unchallenged clout, they are viewed as traitors to Islam.

Ahmadis consider themselves Muslims but believe that their late-19th century founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was a prophet of God, a belief viewed as heresy by Pakistani Muslims who regard Muhammad as Islam’s final prophet.

The sect’s marginalization was set into motion in 1974 when Pakistan’s parliament enacted the law branding Ahmadis as non-Muslims. The crackdown on the Ahmadis intensified in the 1980s during the rule of Gen. Zia ul-Haq, who ordered a maximum three-year prison term for any Ahmadi who called himself a Muslim, carried out the Muslim call to prayer or referred to an Ahmadi place of worship as a mosque.

“As a result of Zia’s decrees, the state facilitated the mullahs who were already against us,” said Syed Mehmood, spokesman for the Ahmadi community in Faisalabad. “That’s when the persecution started. Hundreds of Ahmadis were jailed just because they said Salaamaleykum.”

Mehmood said the persecution continues today, forcing Ahmadis in Faisalabad to find creative ways to survive. As a result of the killings of the three Ahmadi businessmen in April, along with recent kidnappings and other acts of violence against Ahmadis, community members routinely change their routes to and from home, vary the time of day they arrive and leave work, and lie when asked on the phone about their whereabouts. Many of them have put their social lives — going to parties, meeting friends for lunch or tea — on hold.

At Zaheer Malik’s Toyota dealership, a gleaming glass and silver-paneled building out of place amid the cinder-block merchant stalls on the outskirts of Faisalabad, tall, broad-shouldered armed guards stand watch in the parking lot as well as at the foot of the stairs leading to Malik’s second-floor office.

Malik, a wealthy Pakistani Ahmadi in his mid-30s, says he has received several threats recently, including one in May in which a man came to the showroom and urged his driver to quit. “They told him, ‘Your boss is not a Muslim and we might do something to him,’ ” Malik said. ” ‘It’ll be better if you leave the job. We don’t want you to die with him.’

“For last the month, I can’t go to the gym, I can’t go anywhere to have dinner, can’t go to parties, I just stay home,” Malik said. “Every day I’m changing schedules, changing cars. Every day I’m telling someone I’m in Lahore when I’m really in Faisalabad, or I’m in Dubai when I’m actually in Karachi.”

Omar Ahmed, 27, keeps a pistol with him at all times and stations armed guards outside his jewelry store. Ahmed took over the shop after his father, Ashraf Pervaiz, was killed in the same hail of bullets that killed Masood’s father, Masood Javed, and his brother, Asif Masood. Ahmed says that if he could leave Pakistan, he would. But his predicament is the same as Naeem Masood’s: As elder sons, they have to stay for the sake of their families and the family businesses.

“We’re in a battlefield every day,” Ahmed said. “We have to live with the fact that we are Ahmadis.”

Ahmadis say they don’t expect much help from city police, who they say have shown little interest in solving crimes committed against their community. Masood said he recently visited police headquarters to ask whether investigators had made any progress finding the killers of his father, brother and uncle.

“They said, ‘You tell us the names of the gunmen, and we will go and capture them,’ ” Masood said.

Rao Sardar, a top Faisalabad police official, said it’s not a question of police indifference but a simple matter of manpower. The Faisalabad district has a police force of 7,000 officers charged with securing a population of 8 million, he said.

“That’s a very low ratio, and that’s the problem,” Sardar said. “We’re doing all we can do.”

Ahmadis say police indifference is only part of the problem. Laws that brand Ahmadis, a minority regarded elsewhere in the world as a Muslim sect, as non-Muslims only serve to breed intolerance within Pakistani society, large segments of which are illiterate and easily swayed by radical imams and the country’s powerful patchwork of religious parties.

A neighborhood’s lack of reaction to an act of persecution against an Ahmadi often provides an example of that intolerance. A year ago, Laeeq Ahmed was driving home from work when, a few hundred yards from his house, gunmen sprayed his car with bullets. Ahmed’s wife, Nuzhat Laeeq, rushed to her husband, who was still alive but unconscious, and pleaded with bystanders to help. The crowd ignored her, she said.

Ahmed died the next day in a hospital. Later, witnesses of the slaying described to Laeeq what had happened, how the gunmen had celebrated afterward by chanting, “We have killed an infidel!” Despite the presence of witnesses, however, the crime remains unsolved.

“We believe that the government, its legal system and the people here won’t help us,” Laeeq said, speaking in a hushed, quavering voice behind a black veil. “The police won’t give us any kind of investigation. We have left our fate, and this case, up to God.”

I have heard at multiple times that Christians or Ahmadis are forced to evacuate their homes and behind this force, some lame and vicious reason always worked. The power people from majority feel and the authority with which they exercise it jeopardize the existence of such communities. All this is happening under different pretext and it always connects every reason to religion. The persecution has different shades and forms, but it goes unpunished because the society has never stood with weak. The state has not introduced such laws supportive and in favour of weak communities. In the scenario given above another landlord made life of many Christian families difficult who eventually decided to leave the village. Their only crime was that they raised their voice against injustice when the landlord tried to sleep with one of a Christian girl.

Now who can ensure that these people will get justice or return to their homes in a safe environment? These incidents are not new, but what makes them so tragic that the criminals remain at large.

Below is the story:

Christian residents of a village close to Khanewal, the capital city of Khanewal District in the Punjab province of Pakistan, are being forced by local Muslim landlords to “evict their homes” by Thursday, July 1, 2010, reports Jawad Mazhar, special correspondent for ANS, reporting from Pakistan.

There are 250 Christian families living there amidst 6,000 Muslim families.

The ASSIST News Service (ANS) has learned from local Christians that the residents who are being forced out of their homes are all from village number 123/10R, Katcha Khoh.

Talking to ANS about the peremptory eviction order by the Muslim landlords, Christian villager, Shehzad Masih, claimed that Muslim elders had ordered some local Muslims to evict the residents because some of the Christian families “had raised their voice against the injustice which was being served to them.”

Mr. Masih said that 75 percent of the families have already locked their homes and migrated and now has nowhere to live.

He went onto allege that one of the landowners had tried to sleep with one of the teenage Christian girls he employed and had become angry when this didn’t occur and this had caused much anger and the need for revenge. ANS has also learned there were several precedents from the past which could be singled out when Muslim landlords or their sons had raped or attempted to rape Christian women or girls who served at their homes as maidservants.

The order of the alleged unlawful forcible relocation by Muslim elders of village was issued after Christian men, women and girls had protested against the “disdainful attitude of Muslim women and men towards Christians at this village.” Khalid Gill, Christians Lawyers Foundation (CLF) President and General Secretary Azhar Kaleem told ANS in an interview about the “pathetic condition” of villagers.

Local Christian residents especially, Rasheed Masih, Shehzad Mash, Nathaniel Masih, the son of Inayat Masih, and also a Christian widow called Laviza said that they have no other place to settle therefore they have appealed and expressed about their apprehensions to the Chief Justice of Pakistan’s apex Court, Mian Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary, and also to the American Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Peterson, asking them to help them save their homes. They also stated that they regretted that those “Christian leaders who proclaim to be stalwarts of Christian rights” are “just working for US Dollar, Pound Starlings and Euros” and apparently “have no interest in problem of Christians in Pakistan.”

I dedicate this blog to all those voices unheard anywhere in the world. To begin my journey of hearing the pathos, I choose to let my eyes see what most people loath to see; to feel what they are ashamed of admitting even in the darkest of the nights; and to fight against what stands so apt and right for them. Hundreds and thousands of Pakistanis have been sacrificed in the interest of keeping the popular religion alive with a clear imagination of who could own this country– not all for sure.

The tales of persecution of minorities in Pakistan could not grab the fancy of fairy tales, but leave a horror to recall. Let alone Christians, Hindus, but people from other sects are witnessing discrimination, hatred, and all sorts of violations that have left them with a strong sense of alienation.

Article 27 of” International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” says:

“In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, or to use their own language.”

Pakistan has recently signed the instrument of ratification and awaiting the approval from the cabinet.

Not only this, Pakistan is a signatory of Universal Declaration of Human Rights which binds all states to respect basic human rights of citizens.

Article 2 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights says:

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Despite of all these international declarations, Pakistan could not commit anything to its citizens and all the governments hide behind the shield of religion and succumb to the pressure the religious political parties exert.

No one gives anyone this right to judge any citizen on the basis of creed and beliefs. Who are we to decide what people from other beliefs deserve as the citizens. Secular was the foundation of this country, which could not be maintained throughout these years.

I believe, to some extend, we all fall in the same category—minority—either religious in front of a majority group, or social stung by classes. It may appear a small effort to hear those feeble and unheard voices but it is a reply to the unjust and insensitive attitude of this society towards the groups with dissenting voices and beliefs.

Lets all make a conscientious effort towards having a tolerant society above all religious, cultural and social prejudices.

I believe, to some extend, we all fall in the same category—minority—either religious in front of a majority group, or social stung by classes. It may appear a small effort to hear those feeble and unheard voices but it is a reply to the unjust and insensitive attitude of this society towards the groups with dissenting voices and beliefs.